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18.00 Prime Minister David Cameron addressed the crowd at the end of the event and announced the commitment to set up the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation with £50 million coming from central govenrment. He said:

It is time for Britain as a nation to stand up to say we will remember. We will not allow any excuse of anti-semitism in our country. We will not allow any form of prejudice to disrupt the multi-faith democracy we are so proud to call our home.

Today we stand together whatever our faith, whatever our creed, whatever our politics. We stand in remembrance of those who were murdered in the darkest hours of human history. And we stand united in our resolve to fight prejudice and discrimination in all its forms.

We will close our live coverage there, but you can read a dispatch on the day's events in Auschwitz, and the commemorations at Westminster, here:

16.51 Survivors and families are lighting candles in remembrance to the music of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings.

16.48 David Cameron has announced that the UK will have a national memorial and learning centre dedicated to commemorating and educating about the Holocaust. It will be in central London and has the aim of ensuring that for generations to come, the Holocaust is remembered and taught across the country. The centre hopes to get many visitors and the announcement comes after the cross party Holocaust Commission set up by the Prime Minister.

The commission has "spent the last year investigating how the country should ensure that the memory of the Holocaust is preserved".

"Today we stand together - whatever our faith, whatever our creed, whatever our politics. We stand in remembrance of those who were murdered in the darkest hour of human history, we stand in admiration of what our Holocaust survivors have given to our country and we stand united in our resolve to fight prejudice and discrimination in all its forms.

“Today - with the full support of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition - I am accepting the recommendations of the Holocaust Commission. Britain will have a National Memorial, a world-class Learning Centre and an endowment fund to secure Holocaust education forever.

“I thank Mick Davis and all the Commissioners - including Ed Balls, Michael Gove and Simon Hughes - who have given this work the cross-party status it so profoundly deserves. As Prime Minister I will ensure that we will keep Britain’s Promise to Remember: today, tomorrow and for every generation to come.”

16.44 The Prince of Wales describes the Holocaust as "an unparalleled human tragedy and an act of evil unique in history" in a speech at the Holocaust Memorial Service in London

16.41 Prayers were read to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, AFP reports.

Those in the audience, including survivors wearing items of clothing that were part of the Auschwitz camp uniform, shed tears.

16.25 Some of those attending the commemoration in Poland - four delegations according to the BBC enter "Death Gate" at Birkenau.

In London, Joe Shute reports from Westminster.

The Prince of Wales has just finished speaking in Central Hall, Westminster, calling the Holocaust an "evil unique in history".

"The Holocaust is not just a Jewish tragedy nor merely a dark page from the Second World War.but a warning and a lesson to all of us of all faiths at all times," he said.

The Prince finished his short speech by reading out a three-line anonymous poem scratched on to a wall by a victim of the Holocaust.

"I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining.

"I believe in love, even though I don't feel it.

"I believe in God, even when he is silent."

At the holocaust commemoration at Westminster, The Prince of Wales reads out a 3-line poem....

16.09 On anti-Semitism and Israel, Mr Lauder said: "For decades the world has been fed lies about Israel ... that Israel has no right to exist. We all learned that when you tell a lie three times and there is no response, that lie becomes the truth."

16.08 Seated in the front row of the Westminster event is the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, reports Joe Shute.

16.06 Ronald Lauder, a US-Jewish businessman and philanthropist, told the audience at Auschwitz: "Anti-Semitism will grow if no one speaks out. When whole countries are filled with hate, anti-Semitism leads to Auschwitz."

"Jews are targeted in Europe once again because they're Jews, Jewish businesses and synagogues are attacked."

"It looks more like 1933 than 2015."

15.44 AFP has some information on what happened more than 70 years ago.

Part of Adolf Hitler's genocide plan against European Jews, dubbed the "Final Solution", Auschwitz-Birkenau operated in the occupied southern Polish town of Oswiecim between June 1940 and January 1945.

A barbed wire fence surrounds the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp

Of the more than 1.3 million people imprisoned there, 1.1 million -- mainly European Jews -- perished, either in the gas chambers or by starvation or disease.

The Nazis killed six million of pre-war Europe's 11 million Jews.

15.40 Matthew Day is in at Auschwitz-Birkenau and he's spoken to survivors in Poland.

For Arek Hersh the passing of 70 years has not diminished the fear Auschwitz instilled upon him as a child in 1944.

Back then he was just 14 when he arrived at Nazi Germany’s most infamous death camp with dozens of other Jewish children who had been separated from their families by the Holocaust.

“I shudder every time I think about this place. I can’t control the fear. Every time I come here I feel fearful,” the 85 year-old told the Telegraph as he joined other survivors at the camp to mark the anniversary of its liberation by the Soviet Red Army in 1945.

“When I think about what happened to me all those years ago. In 1944 I came to Auschwitz with 185 children: only two got out, and I was one of them.

A screen displays a picture of a fence as survivors and personalities sit at a tent erected in front of the entrance of the former Nazi concentration camp

Arriving at the main entrance at the Birkenau complex he managed to stick with the group deemed “healthy” by the SS and was so spared instant dispatch in the gas chambers. Shaved, stripped of all his possessions and with the number B7608 tattooed on his arm he became an Auschwitz prisoner.

“It’s now been 70 years but back then I really didn’t think I would make it,” he continued. “When I walked out of Auschwitz in January 1945 on the Death March it was -9 Fahrenheit and I was just in the ‘pyjamas’ that consisted the camp’s uniform. People died from cold others who fell behind were shot in the back of the head.

“When I think of all the terrible things that happened to us: how we lived, how we died. It’s a reminder of what men can do to each other.”

Mr Hersh survived and ended the war at the Theresienstadt concentration camp. From there he was eventually taken with 300 other orphans to Windermere in the Lake District and after that he settled down and re-built his life in England.

Although wrapped in the peaceful surroundings of new life in a new country the trauma of war refused to leave him and for decades afterwards he suffered from nightmares.

Yet despite the memories and his fear of Auschwitz, Mr Hersh makes regular trips to the camp, sometimes even as many as three or four times a year. Most of the time he travels with parties of schoolchildren to pass on his experiences in the hope they will learn, and that what happened to him will never happen again.

But he also travels to Auschwitz because he feels owes is to those who did not survive.

“It’s my duty to come back. I want to come back,” he said standing in the shadow of the camp’s barbed wire. “It is my duty to those who died and that is very important for me. I lost 81 members of my family. Cousins, relatives, sister and brothers. After the war I found out a sister had survived by escaping to Russia but she died a few years ago and now only I am left.”

15.32 The audience in Poland are now being shown a film, produced by Steven Spielberg, about the camp.

In London, Joe Shute has spoken to more survivors including Freddie knoller, 93.

Mr Knoller, who lives in Totteridge, is one of many survivors from Auschwitz who for years tried to suppress the memories of what he experienced.

"I didn't talk about it for 35 years, he says. "But one evening my family forced me to. We stayed up until 4am talking. "Before I ever spoke about it I had lots of nightmares, but after that the nightmares stopped."

15.28 Mr Kent, who was born in 1929, was liberated together with his brother Leon on April 23, 1945 in Flossenburg. Kent now lives in New York and is the president of the International Auschwitz Committee.

15.27 Mr Kent in Auschwitz says he hopes this generation will build on mankind's great traditons and fight against anti-Semitism.

He criticises the use of the word, 'lost', it doesn't accurately describe the cruelty endured by children, men and women who were murdered - "not displaced".

"Those who died in Auschwitz did not perish in the traditional sense of the word. By using sanitising words, we are helping the deniers."

15.21 The first of three survivors who spoke earlier was Halina Birenbaum, born in 1929 in Warsaw, AFP reports.

She describes being shot in the arm by a guard, who had aimed for her heart. She describes the Nazis' "sophisticated torture", how she was forced to sing German songs, and how she saw and smelled the piles of "burning human bodies".

As a child she survived the nightmare of the Warsaw Ghetto and camps at Majdanek, Auschwitz, Ravensbruck and Neustadt-Glewe, where she was liberated in 1945. In 1947 she emigrated to Israel.

15.19 At Auschwitz-Birkenau, survivor Roman Kent tells the audience: "A minute in Auschwitz was like an entire day, a day was like a year, and a month an eternity."

Mr Kent said: "We must teach that hate is never right and love is never wrong."

15.14 We'll continue covering the Polish commemorations but Joe Shute in London reports that there are around 200 survivors gathered in London for the Holocaust Memorial Day trust event. He has been speaking to some of them of the survivors of their experiences.

Among them is Ivor Perl, 82, who now lives in Essex. Mr Perl lost hisparents and seven siblings during the holocaust. Only he and his brother Alec survived.

Aged 12, he spent a year in concentration camps - including Auschwitz - before he was liberated from Dachau in May 1945.

"The amount of people that come to this event and the support they give really helps with the pain.," he says.

"I'm afraid the pain never leaves. A day doesn't go by where I don't have some sort of recollection of the camps.when that memory comes back so does the pain."

15.08 Mr Albinis speaking about those who escaped taking documents to prove the "evil" happening.

Few were lucky - only 10 per cent of escapes ended in success... It gave hope that the world would find out about the crimes.

15.06 Former inmate, Kazimierz Albin, is now speaking - the translation is direct from the live feed above. He was born in Kracow in 1922, and was the second Auschwitz survivor to speak at the ceremony. In February 1943 he escaped from the camp.

In mid-1942, the Auschwitz concxentration camp was transpformed into the death camp.

Coming to the railway mount were transports of Jews from all the captured parts of Europe.

Pregnant women, ailing children, go to the gas chambers. Around Auschwitz, several sub-camps are developed.

14.58 Mr Komorowski called survivors "guardians of the memories of Auschwitz" and said xenophobia and anti-Semitism lay at the "foundations of the collapse of our civilisation" in the 20th century.

"German Nazis made Poland an eternal cemetery of the Jews."

14.55 Those at the ceremony include Belgium's King Philip I, Dalia Grybauskaite, the Lithuanian president, Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president, and King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of The Netherlands.

14.54The president added: For over 70 years, we have been trying to convey to the world, the true evil of German death factories.

14.46 The president of Poland is delivering his speech.

We are in the place where our civilisation went down, tthe place where German Nazis launched a real death industry and a human being reduced was reduced to a camp number.

"10 years ago, a survivor said: 'Here they kept my family in prison and they burned everyone - they took my name and they gave me a number. I became a number.'

"We are standing in the place where over a million people were ruthlessly murdered for being Jews - but also [for being] Poles, Roma, Soviet and many many others - the place that reminds us of the murderous Nazi ideology.

Mr Komorowskiou told the survivors: "You are the most important participants of today's commemorations.

14.35 Bronisław Komorowski, the Polish president, will make a welcome address while camp survivors will make speeches, and heads of state will light candles, according to AFP.

14.34 The live stream of the main event at the Birkenau site has begun.

13.24 Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, paid tribute to those killed and the survivors as he pledged to continue work to prevent future genocides.

I am humbled to be at Auschwitz-Birkenau today, 70 years since its liberation. Standing in these chilling surroundings and imagining what happened here, I have seen for myself how the unprecedented horror of the Holocaust continues to hold universal meaning. It is also close enough in time that survivors can still bear witness to the horrors that engulfed the Jewish people and to the terrible suffering of the many millions of other victims of the Nazis.

“We remember the victims who perished; and I pay tribute to the survivors still with us, many of whom work tirelessly to share their stories and memories with the next generation. We continue to stand up against those who distort or deny the Holocaust and to confront anti-Semitism wherever it is found.

“With our international partners, we will continue to support Holocaust education, remembrance and research – as of fundamental importance in themselves, and for prevention of future genocides.”

13.04 Watch video footage of survivors gathering at Auschwitz-Birkenau to remember the millions killed in the Holocaust on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the death camp:

12.48 Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who is noticeably absent from proceedings in Auschwitz today, has taken part in an alternative ceremony at a Jewish museum at Moscow, reports AFP:

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday slammed what he called attempts to rewrite history as he presided over a politically sensitive ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops.

"Any attempts to hush up these events, distort, re-write history are unacceptable and immoral," Putin said at a Jewish museum in Moscow. He is conspicuously staying away from the main events in Poland in a gesture laying bare sharp divisions with the West over the war in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the Jewish Museum in Moscow (AP)

It was under the headline “Germans murder 700,000 Jews in Poland”, that this newspaper reported the “greatest massacre in the world’s history” on June 25, 1942.

The story was remarkably detailed and accurate, yet the credit belongs neither to this newspaper nor the anonymous “Daily Telegraph reporter” who was the author. All the facts were supplied by Szmul Zygielbojm, a member of the Polish government in exile who made it his mission to inform the world about the Holocaust.

In the pages of The Daily Telegraph, Zygielbojm succeeded in revealing the mass murder of Jews. But he was dismayed by the lack of public reaction.

As early as August 1941, Winston Churchill had denounced the atrocities against the Jews as a “crime without a name”. Yet Zygielbojm detected no wave of revulsion sufficient for the Allies to take special steps to obstruct the Holocaust.

12.21 The Queen, who is patron of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, has sent this message to mark the 70th anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation, which will be printed in the official programme booklet to accompany commemorative events across the country:

Today's UK commemorative event for Holocaust Memorial Day marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

The event is the start of commemorations throughout this anniversary year as we remember all those affected: those who died, those who have rebuilt their lives in Britain, and the rescuers and liberators who took great risks to assist and save their fellow human beings.

Many refugees and survivors of the camps and ghettoes found a home in the United Kingdom and have given us their energy and commitment.

This year's theme asks us all to do what we can to keep alive the memories of those who suffered during the Holocaust.

12.15 Moving images of Auschwitz survivors, along with Polish president Bronislaw Komorowski, laying wreaths at the former Nazi extermination camp's Wall of Death at the 70th anniversary ceremony this morning:

12.02 Turkey will today hold its first ever Holocaust memorial ceremony in its capital Ankara.

Holocaust International Remembrance Day was first marked in Turkey in 2011, but ceremonies had always been held in Istanbul.

"It is a duty of humanity to remember the Holocaust, one of the biggest crimes in history, and to teach future generations about it so as to ensure this kind of offence will never be experienced again," the prime minister's office said in a statement.

"Our country is taking all necessary steps to prevent such crimes from recurring."

The ceremony will be at the private Bilkent University and will also be attended by members of the Jewish community.

A keen sympathiser of the Palestinian cause, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has often blasted Israel during attacks on Gaza, declaring in July that the Jewish state had "surpassed Hitler in barbarism".

10.58 Milos Zeman,the Czech president, has used a speech at a Holocaust commemorative event in Prague to compare Isil to the Nazis, warning it has the potential to carry out a "super-holocaust".

Mr Zeman called for international military action led by the United Nations Security Council against global terrorism.

He said Isil represents today’s biggest security threat, and has the potential to carry out a “super-holocaust” resulting in hundreds of millions of deaths.

Czech President Milos Zeman in Prague (AP Photo/CTK, Michal Kamaryt)

10.41 Steven Spielberg, speaking to Holocaust survivors in Krakow yesterday, said he hopes today's commemorations will renew the "call to remember" the Holocaust, and serve as a warning for future generations.

If you are a Jew today, in fact if you are any person who believes in the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom in free expression, you know that like many other groups, we are once again facing the perennial demons of intolerance.

[There are] Facebook pages identifying Jews and their geographic locations with the intention to attack and the growing efforts to banish Jews from Europe.

My hope for [Tuesday's] commemoration is that the survivors will feel confident that we are renewing their call to remember. That we will not only make known their own identities, but in the process help form a meaningful, collective conscience for the generations to come.

The Labour Leader disclosed that he had recently lit a candle for his mother’s father, who died in a German death camp 70 years ago.

He said: “This is really an emotional day for people who have memories of family involved in this. It’s 70 years since my grandfather died in one of the camps and I marked that about 10 days ago.

“It’s a Jewish thing, you light a candle. It’s a kind of way of remembering.”

Mr Miliband said his grandfather’s death was not discussed when he was growing up, and that it was only last year, during a visit to the Yad Vashem memorial in Israel, that he learned exactly what had happened to him.

“It’s really hard this, because I talked to my mum about this: it’s not the kind of thing you talked about very much when you’re growing up in a household affected by these things, but it sort of marks you and it’s so important that we remember.

“I know this sounds almost unbelievable, but it’s only about six months ago that we discovered the full circumstances of what happened to my grandfather.

“I want to Yad Vashem, the place in Israel where they have records on the Holocaust, and that’s where we discovered more information about what had happened to him.”

“He ended up in Germany in a labour camp, which is where he eventually died according to the records.”

10.03 A Catholic Mass to honour the dead and the survivors has begun at the Centre for Dialogue and Prayer

10.00 "There is no German identity without Auschwitz," the German President, Joachim Gauck, said in an address to a special session of the Bundestag to mark the anniversary, Justin Huggler writes.

The memory of the Holocaust remains a matter for all citizens living in Germany. It belongs to the history of this country.

As Angela Merkel listened, Mr Gauck said: "Never before has a state so systematically stigmatised whole groups of people separated and destroyed them in such large numbers, with specially created death camps and a precisely-organized, relentless and highly efficient killing machine, as in Auschwitz, which became a symbol of the Holocaust." He criticised the attitude of post-war Germany to the victims of the Holocaust.

"In retrospect, it is shameful that petitioners were made victims again, shameful if compensation for the suffering of victims of the Germans was worth less than the suffering of German victims," he said. "The population of the young Federal Republic knew little sympathy for the victims of Nazi violence."

At a time when debate over immigration is particularly charged in Germany, against the backdrop of the Pegida anti-Islam movement, Mr Gauck made a point of including immigrants in his speech. "Even members of the third and fourth generation, people without German roots, feel touched when they discover the names of their former landlords in Auschwitz, on suitcases of the victims," he said.

"We all, who call Germany home, have a responsibility as to which way our country goes. "

09.45 The French president laid a wreath earlier and has said the French republic "will never forget".

Francois Hollande told a gathering at the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris that France is a homeland for Jewish people. He adds that he wishes to make anti-Semitism a crime under the law and said the rise in anti-semitic attacks was "unbearable".

He said that France will protect all its children - all religions, and acknowledged that anti-Muslim acts have also proliferated.

Earlier today, the French president spoke to five Jews deported and five young Jews at the Holocaust memorial in Paris

09.35 Bronisław Komorowski, the Polish president, adjusts a ribbon on a wreath at the 'Wall of Death' in the former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz in Oswiecim earlier today

A survivor touches the 'Wall of Death' in the former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp

09.07 Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, is also in Poland with the British delegation including three survivors. Many fear this could be the last Auschwitz liberation ceremony for some of the survivors present.

08.58 Among the leaders to attend Auschwitz are the presidents of Germany and Austria, the perpetrator nations that have spent decades atoning for their sins, as well as François Hollande, the French president, and others. The United States is sending a delegation led by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew - and President Barack Obama has come for some criticism for not attending himself.

Poland apparently snubbed Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, though officials will not admit that openly. The organisers, Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and the International Auschwitz Council, opted for a form of protocol this year which avoided direct invitations by Poland's president to his foreign counterparts.

The organisers instead simply asked countries that are donors to Auschwitz, including Russia, whom they planned to send. Poland's Foreign Ministry says Mr Putin could have attended if he wanted to.

08.53 Joachim Gauck and Angela Merkel - the German president and chancellor respectively - and Andreas Vosskuhle, president of the German constitutional court, applaud during a ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary in the German parliament Bundestag in Berlin

08.48 Tomas Radil was a young teenager living in southern Slovakia when he was transported to Auschwitz, changing his life forever.

Unlike millions of others, ,Mr Radil, who became a respected neurologist and professor of psychophysiology after the war, survived the horrors of the Nazi regime.

08.40 Wreaths were laid at the exact moment the Red Army tanks entered the camp on this day 70 years ago.

08.32 There are expected to be up to 300 survivors attending the event at Auschwitz and crowds are gathering, preparing to lay wreaths.

08.25 A commemoration ceremony has begun in Oswiecim, Poland. At 8.30 former prisoners will lay wreaths and light candles at the so-called Death Wall at Block 11 at Auschwitz.

You can watch the live stream to see that and the 10am Catholic mass to be held at the Centre for Dialogue and Prayer,

07.55 A commemorative event, organised by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT) will also take place in central London today, amid heightened security concerns for the Jewish community in the UK in the wake of the Paris attacks earlier this month.

So stringent are the security measures that even the location has been kept secret.

But organisers of the event, whose theme is "Keep the Memory Alive", expect over 200 Holocaust survivors to attend, as well as politicians, dignitaries, and religious leaders from all of the major faiths.

Seventy candles designed by sculptor Sir Anish Kapoor will be lit at the commemoration in London, around the country and at Auschwitz.

A candle designed by sculptor Sir Anish Kapoor for Holocaust Memorial Day (Holocaust Memorial Day Trust)

07.49 As Holocaust survivors arrive at the former Nazi concentration camp in what is now Poland, Camilla Turner describes today's events:

As Holocaust survivors travelled to Auschwitz to utter prayers for their murdered loved ones, a pained voice rang out, reverberating through the barracks and barbed wire: "I don't want to come here anymore!"

Hundreds have made the journey to the former Nazi death camp from all around the world, some returning for the first time since the war.

Together, several of them said kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, next to the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign, which means “work makes you free”.

The survivors will attend ceremonies in Auschwitz today to mark the 70th anniversary of the Soviet army's liberation of the camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Mordechai Ronen, an 82-year-old survivor from Hungary who now lives in Canada, made the trip reluctantly and said he was unsure he possessed the strength to handle it emotionally. After praying in Hebrew he cried out, "I don't want to come here anymore!"

Ukrainian holocaust survivor Igor Malitski walks among the barracks at the former Auschwitz concentration camp in Oswiecim. (AFP/Getty Images)

07.30 Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of today's events, as countries around the world mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

Today is 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and is expected to be the final anniversary at which large numbers of survivors of the Nazi extermination camp will be present.